


The Anniversary

by momentarygrace



Category: Captain America (2011), The Avengers (2012)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-06-04
Updated: 2012-06-04
Packaged: 2017-11-06 21:03:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,628
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/423167
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/momentarygrace/pseuds/momentarygrace
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Tag for the Avengers movie and for Captain America, the First Avenger.</p><p>Tony's given a message for a certain man out of time. Genius, billionaire, playboy, philanthropist... delivery boy?</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Anniversary

Tony Stark figured he could be forgiven for having a moment of deja vu when JARVIS announced the arrival of "Natalie Rushman" at the Stark Tower's new and slightly makeshift downstairs entryway. Makeshift, because subsequent to events of the Chitauri invasion of New York City, Midtown, Tony found he had both the need for enhanced security and at the same time, a whole new class of possible visitor who might or might not show up at any or all hours of the day or night, in a variety of modes of dress, occasionally bearing weapons, frequently needing to ditch admirers and/or paparazzi if not actual news reporters. 

To be honest, some of this was Tony over-thinking things. In general, the visitors he was concerned about each had their own ways of dealing with the issues of followers, and not one had developed the habit of popping in very often, but if for nothing else than for a particular unassuming, if not absolutely humble-appearing scientist, Tony preferred to be prepared to welcome while still maintaining necessary security standards.

None of which explained why JARVIS was announcing a person who didn't really exist, except as a false identity for a certain SHEILD operative more colorfully known in very specific circles as an ebony arachnid.

As the elevator opened, he spoke while turning away from the schematics he was redesigning with the help of JARVIS's wireframe display capabilities.

"I realize now it was an oversight not to have Natalie Rushman officially terminated in the Stark Industries system... what can I do for you, Agent Romanoff?"

Looking over his visitor, his eyebrow twitched only slightly. "Natalie Rushman" on a casual day, then. 

The redhead returned a characteristic cool smile deliberately edged with a mere hint of incredulity. "You want me to believe you're that sloppy?" Neither Agent Romanoff nor Natalie Rushman smirked, though on very rare occasions the Widow might. "Good to see you too." A quick glance around might have been reflex, or a silent remark. If the latter, Tony didn't care enough to wonder what she might be saying.

"I don't know what you're talking about." Tony Stark definitely did smirk. His eyes however never picked up the humor. "You look weird in jeans. Not bad weird, just weird weird." He didn't ask why she was there a second time, just let it hang between them.

"Fury sent me," she didn't let it hang long enough to be worrisome. "I figured it would attract less attention just to use my Stark credentials." A shrug followed that. She'd continued to advance from the door but curving her trajectory enough to make it less of a challenge. They were comrades now, but outside of actual battle conditions, some walls went back up. They had to.

"Sure, fine, whatever," Tony dismissed the second comment, his mind already having moved on. He waited with every appearance of patience unless you knew him well enough to see the slight tightening at the corners of his eyes. "The guy can't make a phone call?"

That was just habit – the habit of being an asshole, which would never fade completely. Natasha decided it would be more disturbing if it had.

"Maybe I wanted to stretch my legs." Stupid comment, meet stupid reply. Tony smiled. She smiled back, without much change of expression. A level of comfort, call it. Sauntering around to the other side of the wireframe, she looked at the display. "Another suit redesign?"

"Perfection is a road, Agent, not a destination. And my suit is always perfect." He cocked his head, watching her.

With a shrug, she pulled a small item out of her jeans pocket and placed it on the edge of the display counter between them. Tony frowned, and picked up up. 

"Stark Tech... but it's old..." Tony turned the small oblong stick in his hand, about twice the width and half again the thickness and length of a USB memory chip. "My father fooled around with these, but he kept it in house. SSD, everyone gave them up in the sixties for drum storage. Where did Fury get this?"

"He said it was delivered," Natasha answered, watching him for clues. Nick Fury tended to assume that certain of his agents in particular knew more than they let on, or could find out without much trouble, so when he was cryptic, sometimes it meant something, sometimes it meant nothing. But she was curious. "Old school – messenger service. The slip specified delivery date and recipient but not sender, or when it was sent."

Frown creases had already formed between Tony's eyebrows and around his mouth. They deepened a little. He didn't like cryptic. It was annoying. From Fury, sometimes more than annoying. The worst thing about it though was that it reminded him of his father. 

Like this piece of dinosaur-ware. In his mind's eye, Tony could form a slightly fuzzy mental image of his dad holding one of these. Fuzzy either because he was building it via imagination, or because he was pulling it from a rarely recollected memory. His dad in the mental image lifted the stick-shaped solid state disk and spoke at it.

Rubbing with a thumb, Tony felt a slight scooped indention on the side. He pressed it.

A tiny, green light glowed on the edge of the stick. 

Distinctly, his father's voice said, "First Saturday in June, three East fifty-third Street, nine pm. PCP in care of a friend."

It was the second time Howard Stark's voice had startled his son by seeming to come from nowhere, as if he'd somehow just stepped into the room while Tony wasn't looking. In a reflex, his grip tightened and the green light went off, leaving silence.

"That's today," Natasha said quietly, with only the subtlest thread of question in it. 

Tony looked up, fighting equal and ridiculous flares of guilt and astonishment. The flicker of anger that followed was washed out, a ghost of its former self.

"It's good that you can read a calendar I suppose," he murmured. The smiled that followed was tight. "Very well, Agent Romanoff, package delivered, enigma uncovered. You can tell Fury I'm on it. Also he can go..."

"Is everything all right, Tony?" She touched his arm, lightly. Briefly.

He tried, really did, not to be surprised that she was concerned.

"Probably," he allowed, unable to give her more than that at the moment. "The ghost of Howard Stark, Present, I guess. Better find out what Dad wants. If it's something bad, Fury will be the first to hear from me."

Natasha tilted her head. "I hope not," she said, and there was just a hint of severity. Tony met her gaze and after a moment nodded in acknowledgment.

It just meant he heard her. Natasha Romanoff didn't require anything else. She was a spy, not a baby sitter, even though sometimes she'd imitated one. As long as he accepted the fact that he had comrades. Partners.

Message received. Neither of them was in the mood for her to kick his ass today.

 

~

 

Tony waited until Natasha left before he turned to the puzzle Nick Fury had sent him. It didn't appear to be life or death, but it might be time sensitive. There were so many questions crowding his mind right now, but it would be pointless to fix on any of them before finding out if he'd heard the whole message.

Resisting the urge to look around and make sure he was physically alone, at least as far as non-robots were concerned, Tony pressed the small indention with his thumb a third time.

"First Saturday in June, three East fifty-third Street, nine pm. PCP in care of a friend." Confirmed – definitely Howard Stark's voice. The fidelity was good enough for recognition, if not outstanding. But the speaker it came from was minute, so for the age of it, definitely remarkable. Tony even heard a slight but recognizable sound that resembled Howard clearing his throat.

"I'm having this sent to someone I trust at SHEILD," the playback continued. "only in the event that something no one thinks possible any more actually happens. If it goes astray, it should be returned to my son Anthony Stark. Tony," a brief pause allowed Tony only enough time to unsuccessfully attempt to resist a tightness in his chest that was surely a phantom sensation. 

"Tony, if you are listening to this recording, you should understand, it's not meant for you." He didn't suppress the grimace but it wasn't as bitter as it might have been. Nothing could reverse the effects of a lifetime of painful memories and misunderstandings, but the fact that Howard Stark had managed to give him a legacy that kept him alive counted for something. Logically or otherwise.

"Assuming that you plan to listen anyway, I hope you've inherited your mother's sense of decency somehow. Use it now."

It continued for about four minutes, before the verbal recording ended.

 

~

 

The sun was a quarter past zenith when Tony found the park. It had taken JARVIS mere seconds to pull up the location from the address on Howard Stark's recording. The late afternoon rays sparkled off the stream of an artificial waterfall that traversed the whole back of the block between two midtown Manhattan buildings. Some debris from the invasion attempt had been raked or pushed or shoveled out to a pile by the curb, but on the whole the tiny pocket park had survived very nearly intact - a small miracle and an added blessing for local people who could duck in and sit under the honey locust trees, the soft roar of the water muting the city jangle with cool grey noise. 

Tony looked around, realizing belatedly that he'd been here before, but not since he was small. The Stark Foundation had been the prime contributor in creating this privately owned public space.

For a few moments he shifted from observation to appreciation, and finally to regret. He'd come on a fool's errand. Pointless.

His eyes swept over the people sitting or standing, moving slowly in or out, or settling to drink coffee or soda from paper cups. 

In the sweep back, his gaze caught on a silhouette, unmistakably familiar, and yet, when had that happened? Even softened by street clothes, it couldn't have been any other.

Fury should have sent someone else. Natasha, anyone.

Tony moved up the four shallow steps and crossed through the short length of the park to join the seemingly young man who stood with his back to the street, watching the waterfall.

Steve Rogers turned as Tony approached, his expression, pleasant yet neutral, suggesting he hadn't been expecting anyone he knew. Certainly there hadn't been any hidden hope that Tony could observe.

"Mister Stark! I mean... Tony..." The corner of Steve Roger's mouth quirked to one side briefly, a self effacing habit so natural people often mistook it. 

"Cap," Tony replied deliberately. 'Rogers' was too formal, perhaps a little unfriendly. 'Steve', he wasn't comfortable with yet. "Definitely Tony. Mister Stark is, well you know who that would be."

Steve turned to fully face Tony, questions in his eyes, but also, a kind of waiting. "Not that I'm not glad to see you, but what are you doing here?" _...now?_ Unspoken last word, but Tony felt it anyway.

Tony didn't try to suppress the grimace. "Good question. Has something to do with what you're doing here. Well, everything to do with it. This is going to be awkward."

All right, so he'd let himself believe that Steve Rogers, whatever his physical abilities, however remarkable his backstory, really wasn't that smart, outside of a narrow range of tactical situations, but that was more a defensive posture than actual truth. They took different routes to get places, and no, Rogers wasn't a scientist or engineer, he was something else, something Tony had ever longed to be and only discovered the moment he took the Mark I for its first hellish stroll through the kidnappers' cave and camp. The impulse had only multiplied geometrically when betrayal, guilt and anger had sent him to Gulmira. 

Some men had instincts, and a few of those, the will to follow them. Even fewer had something indefinable that separated the pure instincts from the base.

Steve watched Tony too calmly. He shouldn't be able to look like that, through such young seeming eyes.

"In that case," Steve said, the quirked half-smile reappearing, "let's sit down. I can buy you a cuppa coffee...?"

"Stop it," Tony's scowl was reflexive. He turned just as easily as the Captain to sit on the steps in front of the fountain. The water kept their voices louder than normal but also covered them from anyone only a few feet away. "Stop being decent," he answered Steve's quizzical look. "We're supposed to snipe at each other, aren't we?"

"Are we?" Steve rested arms on his knees. Sitting side by side meant they didn't have to stare into each other's faces. "If it's all the same, I pass on that. Blame it on the Scepter. I mouthed off and I shouldn't have. So did you. We were both dicks. That's history."

He turned his head to gaze at Tony. "You proved me wrong, didn't you? I guess I woke up from being a... Cap Sickle? … a little cranky."

There were so many openings in that and Tony wanted none of them. He growled and gave Steve a narrowed look. "I said stop doing that."

The Captain shook his head slowly. "I did stop, and said unwarranted things to a good man. I'd rather not repeat the lapse." He'd made a promise.

"Just making it even more awkward," Tony complained. 

"Sorry..."

"Right." Tony pressed dry lips together and then pulled a chapstick out of his pocket, used it, and then offered it to the other man.

That surprised a grin and head shake out of Steve. 

"You know why I'm here, don't you?" It was an accusation, but without teeth. Just Tony admitting he was a little out of his depth.

Steve Roger's expression sobered. "If I had to guess, I'd say something to do with your dad? Or Fury." The latter was an afterthought.

"Both," Tony tried not to sound angry at how on target the guess was.

"You're kidding." Steve squeezed one hand, then the other, just short of crackling his knuckles. It was the first nervous tick Tony had ever seen from the man. He felt instantly better for recognizing it. Steve shook his head again.

"I'm not used to having anyone poke that far into my business." 

Tony wanted to doubt that – as a lab rat, Steve should have been used to it. But science had been more impersonal, he guessed, back in the day. Not so much into the feelings of the subject, as it was now. Maybe that was a blessing.

Reaching into his pocket Tony fished out the small SSD. "My dad left this with some delivery service, to be sent to someone he trusted," only a hint of Tony Stark sarcasm there, "at SHEILD, in the event you should ever reappear." Tony turned it in his fingers, not quite handing it over. "Press the side and it talks to you. Not bad tech for forty years ago."

Steve frowned, watching Tony handle the small device. After a moment, Tony handed it over. 

"Don't play it here," Tony said quickly, touching Steve's hand briefly. The gesture felt oddly easy, not difficult. 

"Why not?" It wasn't a challenge, only curiosity. Steve found his fingers wanted to tighten too much around the thing and made himself be careful not to crush it. Something for him... something from Howard Stark. A voice from the past.

Only it wasn't quite the past to him yet, even with all the soul-jarring changes in the world around him.

"It's personal," Tony made the answer as short as possible, and then found other words spilling out. "He didn't want you to come here... and find this," the park was indicated with a brief flickered look. Tony met Steve's eyes and then looked away. "Find this and be..."

But the last word stuck back in his throat.

"Alone?" Steve said softly. That look again. Not seventy years in those eyes. More like a hundred. 

Tony scowled, shrugged. "He was something of an alcoholic towards the end, but I never thought he'd gotten maudlin." It sounded harsh. 

The last thing Tony expected was a half-quirked smile from Cap. "I wouldn't have expected that either, from him."

And there it was. Steve Rogers had known Tony's father in a way Tony never could. It annoyed him. It angered him a little. He didn't care. "I guess you were good buddies back then."

Tony wasn't prepared for Steve to shake his head. "Not really." Then he seemed to come to himself and looked at Tony apologetically. "I'm sorry, he's... he was a good man. I owed him." It felt to Steve like he was talking about someone who was still alive. It was still hard to realize it wasn't so. "He's smart, like you, and kind of reckless, like you can be. Best pilot I ever saw. He threw everything into... helping. Stopping the bad guys. Saving the good guys."

Tony's throat closed and he stood up abruptly walking a few steps away. The words jangled with everything he knew about his father, almost everything he felt. And yet... the thing that bothered him the most was a sudden surge of pure hunger, to hear more. To ask a hundred questions.

Steve stood up but didn't follow Tony. He'd said too much. But it was just impossible to know how much was too much and what was too little.

As he waited, Steve pocketed the small device. A little emotional grenade just waiting until he was alone to listen to.

After a few minutes, when Tony didn't move any further away, Steve closed enough of the distance to talk at a casual volume.

"You know what used to be here?"

Tony's head came up. "Yeah. The Stork Club. It lasted a long time, till the sixties. A couple of years after it closed down, my dad and some other rich types commissioned a park to be built here. Gift to the city."

Steve was silent, glancing away, perhaps seeing something that didn't exist anymore. Maybe looking for someone.

 _She's still alive,_ Tony managed not to let himself blurt it out. Seemed as if he had some of his mother's decency after all. Cap wasn't dumb, he could find out what he wanted to know on his own when he was ready to. Damn Howard for sticking his nose in.

"It's like him, really," Steve said, as if mind-reading. "Sticking himself into it. I used to think he wanted.. the dame I..."

The brief hunch of shoulders stripped some of the Captain's poise from him for an instant. "None of that matters any more."

Coming out of shock – his Dad had been Captain America's rival for a woman?! - Tony ground his teeth for a bare second and then turned to face Steve. "Of course it matters," if his tone was edged and a little harsh, he felt both vulnerable and angry about it. "Everything matters. That's what I learned, the hard way. Everything. Matters."

Steve didn't step back from Tony's intensity but his posture straightened. 

"What's got you angry?" he asked softly.

"Nothing. You. Fury..." Tony's shoulders rippled like he was trying to shrug off a weight he didn't want. "...they find you, thaw you out, and you're just supposed to swallow everything and move on? Get over it, the world needs saving..."

The quirked half-smile reappeared briefly as Steve ducked his head. "Well it did." Then he looked up. "Good thing you were here to save it. He'd be proud of you, Tony."

If Tony had been wearing repulsors, he'd have jetted out of there. As it was, gravity kept him stationary. He did glare. Because he simply couldn't just call Cap a liar. 

"You want to know something funny?" Steve made the offer, not of truce, in truth they were already beyond that. Just pushing the ice around.

Tony's eyes closed for a minute. _No, not really..._

"Loki's attack? Probably saved my sanity."

Tony growled. "That is all kinds of wrong."

Steve's head tilted. "How many kinds of wrong are there?" Not that he was arguing.

Tony stared for a moment and then laughed softly in spite of himself. Steve watched him, handsome features relaxing slowly. Some other modern slang he didn't recognize. But it eased the tension that had been winding Tony up, so it was okay to be the butt of the joke, for the umpteenth time.

"Thirty-one flavors," Tony muttered under his breath. He tried to glare at Steve again but the heat was gone. "Hey... I want some ice cream. You want some ice cream?"

That earned him a quizzical look. Steve cast one more glance around the park. Lights hung above had started to glow softly as the sun sank beyond the skyline.

"Okay. Is there a soda fountain around here?"

"Seriously?" There were Baskin Robbins in three directions but Tony still preferred Ben & Jerry's most days of the week. "Come on."

Ignoring, rather than not noticing several park goers aiming their phones at the two, Tony Stark led Captain Steve Rogers through the tiny park under the honey locust trees and the lights. He pretended not to notice the brief pause and look back that Steve gave the place.

_"A week next Saturday, at the Stork Club... eight o'clock, don't you dare be late."_

"I'm sorry, Peggy..." it was barely a whisper.

Tony refused to notice. He did hear every word.

**Author's Note:**

> More about The Stork Club - [The Stork Club and the Troops](http://www.stork-club.com/stork-club-and-the-troops.html)
> 
> It became a real pocket park. I substituted Howard Stark for William Paley. [Paley Park](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paley_Park)


End file.
